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Figure 1
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Figure 2
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Team 21

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Justin Rastinejad
Cody Dang
Dennis Han

Kristina Wagstrom

Sponsor

Other

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Designing a Food Storage System for Rural Uganda

Guiding Light Orphans (GLO) is a nonprofit organization that brings aid to the rural area of Masindi, Uganda. Currently, inadequate food storage causes crops to spoil after a few days. The goal of our project is to design a system that preserves the food grown in the rural communities. Our team explored food storage options where we considered cost, nutritional retention, shelf-life, taste, Masindi culture, and ease of operation. Our final system uses solar drying for short term storage and freeze drying for long term storage. Solar drying dehydrates food and prevents harmful ultraviolet rays from degrading food quality. Freeze drying removes water content without altering the taste or shape using reduced pressures and temperatures. We modeled the solar drying unit in ANSYS to determine an effective design to store a given amount of food. Our team also modeled freeze drying by determining the energy required for operation using photovoltaic cells and battery storage. This project will help combat the malnutrition Masindi faces by ensuring year-round access to food.